


The Year of the Scavenger

by MistressKat



Category: Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: Dark, Dubious Consent, Implied Violence, M/M, dark!Sam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2018-08-06
Packaged: 2019-06-22 22:10:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15591807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistressKat/pseuds/MistressKat
Summary: 1973 may be a fever-dream or a last hurrah of his dying brain but it’s one he’s going to own.





	The Year of the Scavenger

**Author's Note:**

  * For [millygal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/millygal/gifts).



> A very belated birthday fic for milly_gal . She wanted LoM with dark!Sam. I hope this is sufficiently disturbed for you… Title is obviously from Bowie’s [Diamond Dogs.](https://youtu.be/36lWAcY9IXE)

_In the year of the scavenger, the season of the bitch_  
_Sashay on the boardwalk, scurry to the Ditch_  
_Just another future song, lonely little kitsch_  
_(There's gonna be sorrow) try and wake up tomorrow_  
  
© David Bowie, 1974  


***  
  
Autumn in Manchester is grey and full of misery that seeps into people’s bones, making them hunch up against the wind and the rain. Sam tilts his head back and drags air into his lungs, great wet rags of soot and resignation, filling him up until he shivers from it. In the mirror, in the dirty shop window, his smile is too wide and full of teeth. He tries to keep his delight, his anticipation hidden, but it’s difficult with the opportunities to just take and take and take crowding him like vultures around a fresh corpse. He can finally be what he always knew he could if not for the oppressing oversight of an organisation concerned for its reputation.  
  
Here, now, there is no PACE 1984, no IPCC toothlessly gnawing at his heels, no ladder to climb that he can’t lower with a whispered word, a promise to look another way. 1973 may be a fever-dream or a last hurrah of his dying brain but it’s one he’s going to own.  
  
Every street with its cracked pavement and cigarette stumps, every dilapidated council house, every failing factory pushing out pollution and hollow-eyed workers like ghosts of the manufacturing crash to come, every pimp, every pusher, every small-time thief and big-time crook, every corrupt, twisted, rusty corner of the city… They are all his for the taking. Sam wants to consume them all, just gobble them up like boiled candy until his teeth will chip and his cheeks will bulge.  
  
He starts small though, just in case people around him are hiding some unexpected moral fibre after all.  
  
Just in case he wakes up too early.  
  
  
***  
  
It’s January when Chris comes to him, scared and shaking, but determined. Sam is almost proud, in a perverse way, that the kid finally grew a spine to ask for what he wants.  
  
Not that it stops him from making him beg for it.  
  
“I know what you did,” Chris says.  
  
“Do you now?” Sam asks, barely twitching an eyebrow. It’s highly unlikely that Chris knows even a fraction of what he’s done, probably doesn’t even know the _words_ for all the things Sam is willing to do, and making him say it is half the fun.  
  
“That junkie in the brick last week, Archie something. I know what happened to him.” Chris lifts his chin defiantly. His hair is wet from the sleet that keeps falling, the ground at their feet slowly turning to slush.  
  
Sam licks the moisture of his lips, tasting grit and winter, bleak as the station parking lot they’re standing on  
  
“Don’t you mean ‘What _I did_ to him’?”  
  
When Chris nods the movement stutters against Sam’s fingers closed around his throat, loose and easy and all the more effective for it.  
  
“Yeah,” Sam says, almost absently. “Let’s talk about what you’re going to do, though. What you’re going to do _for me._ ”  
  
There are no surveillance cameras here, no one to see when he pushes Chris behind the building, into the narrow gap between the bins and the brick wall.  
  
The skin of his face is cold against Sam’s hand, but the heat of his mouth more than makes up for it. Chris’ eyes go huge and dark, the knees of his corduroy trousers darker, the snow soaking through the fabric in seconds.  
  
  
***  
  
The canal side is a riot of colour, yellow of daffodils, purple of crocuses, red of blood. It’s better in the sunshine, like an abstract painting he made in the dark but can only admire properly now.  
  
If only his art teacher could see him now.  
  
“Boss?” Ray interrupts his appreciation of the scenery and Sam turns to him irritably.  
  
“What?” he snaps.  
  
“You want us to collect some forensics?” Ray asks. “Knock on some doors? In case someone saw something?”  
  
The nearest building is more than fifty yards away and houses a group of working girls. No one would’ve seen a damn thing, not if they knew what’s good for them. Sam made sure of that.  
  
“Wouldn’t bother,” he says. “Think it’s pretty clear what happened here.”  
  
Ray blinks at him slowly and Sam suppresses a sigh, spelling it out. “He’s a fence. Dangerous occupation that, especially if you get creative about your conversion rates. Probably fleeced off the wrong guy.” He spares a glance at the corpse, lying on the bank like a gutted fish, its boots dangling in the water. “There are quicker ways for a man to make himself disposable but not many.”  
  
Like trying to blackmail a copper out of time and reasons to hold himself back.   
  
  
***  
  
The club is sweating, moisture running down the walls, making everything clammy to the touch. Sam leans on the bar, the alcohol sitting thick and sticky on his tongue, the music thrumming through the floor into the soles of his feet. His bones shake, rattle and roll, double-sixes all night, Sammy in the sky with diamonds.  
  
“You’re high,” Gene says. His voice is harsh and angry but his eyes tell a different story, oh don’t they just, one that makes Sam grin like a feral cat.  
  
“Wrong,” he says, half shouting over the noise and leaning as close as he can with Gene’s fingers digging into his elbow. “I’m sinking fast and hard and taking everyone with me.”  
  
It’s obvious Gene thinks it’s the charlie talking but Sam speaks the truth, can feel the whole world spiralling down with him, a whirlpool of sewage water and faltering neural connections.  
  
Sam gets shaken some, all bottled up frustration and he lolls with it, trying to get a purchase on the sweat slick skin of Gene’s bare arms. He’d half-expected the ever-present trench coat despite the oppressive July heat but is treated to a display of actual skin instead. Gold star for his subconscious.  
  
“What the fuck you doing here, Tyler?” Gene growls.  
  
“Exactly that.” He grazes teeth over the corner of Gene’s jaw under the disguise of talking into his ear. “Ain’t too picky about it either.”  
  
It gets him what he wants, Gene’s grip tightening to bruising, the banked hunger in his eyes blazing up like a funeral pyre and that’s only fitting, both of them going down in flames. Eat and be eaten, Sam thinks, what a perfect world.  
  
It’s fading from the edges already, everything going grey and indistinct, except for Gene and the dully blinking exit sign ahead of them. Sam laughs as he’s dragged toward it, the sound sharp and jagged like the knife in his boot.  
  
A perfect year, in a perfect world, all his for the rending.  
 


End file.
